


What Does It Take To Make a Heart?

by Loch



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: AU, M/M, Robotjolras
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:05:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loch/pseuds/Loch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is a robot. Angst and bad jokes about TVs follow. Mostly angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a simple thing. Well, Joly would not have agreed –being shot was never a simple thing. Even if it was relatively non-lethal. Which, actually, this hadn’t been. Enjolras had taken a carbine shot directly to his chest, another to his arm, and yet another had skimmed his face.

He hadn’t noticed until it was far too late. Hadn’t noticed until the looks he received changed beyond recognition. To shock, to fear, even to disgust.

When he looked down at himself, he saw a tangled mess. Wiring spilt from his chest, a spark of power travelling along them in time with a heartbeat he didn’t have. His jaw wasn’t moving as it should, his words garbled.

He was finding it hard to stand on the uneven surface of their hastily-built stage all of a sudden. His legs didn’t respond when he tried to balance, instead tipping him back to smash into the cobblestones.

Two pairs of hands caught him. Two faces appeared above him, flickering in and out. Combeferre, he knew straight away. He looked the same as he usually did, though a little panicked. He’d have been standing close for orders, though his marksmanship was needed. It took a moment for the next person to focus enough to allow facial recognition. Grantaire, it had to be. Standing close by for whatever reason he chose today.

His body thrashed once, wildly, as wires connected that shouldn’t. Grantaire took the back of his hand to the face, and he flinched from it, but not far enough, careful not to drop Enjolras even as he tried not to touch him, barely carrying equal weight with Combeferre as they dragged him from the field.

His eyes shut as they went, a very human response to a robot process –his optical centres were shutting down, though he couldn’t run a diagnostic on why. That part of him was kept near where his heart should be –one of the parts that was now scattered on the street.

This clearly convinced the two men that he was unconscious. 

“Did you know?” Grantaire was asking –perhaps more of a demand.

“If you did not, you can assume I did not. You pay closer attention to his features than I.” Combeferre responded, voice back to the calm it usually held.

“You are hardly surprised.”

“Are you?” The guide replied. “It would explain a few details.”

“What would? That our Apo- that our leader is a robot? This is madness, Combeferre!”

There was a darker thing lurking in Grantaire’s words, in the shine in his eyes, the shake of his hands.

“It isn’t.”

“It is! Why is he leading us? Why would he bother? Why didn’t he tell us?”

“It didn’t matter.” Enjolras managed. His jaw was definitely unhinged, but the words were just understandable.

His eyes were still not functioning, but the grip Grantaire had on his arm –possibly an unconscious one, as they’d got him inside their café and onto a table as they’d spoken- tightened and loosened spasmodically.

“Of course it didn’t.” Grantaire said, voice far more lifeless than Enjolras technically was. “Because no one you care about would be at all affected-“

There was a sound of a hand clamping over his mouth, last word muffled by it. He had no way at present of determining whose hand it was, but it was only a few seconds later that Grantaire left, boots soft on the floor.

Combeferre’s fingers danced, ever-so-lightly, on Enjolras’ skin, skirting the wound on his face. “Does this hurt?”

“Combeferre you get your hands away from those wounds this second or I will clean them with lye-“ Joly’s voice rung clear in the room before Enjolras could respond in either confirmation or denial.

His footsteps came closer –slightly off, like he was leaning on one more than the other- and his breath suddenly stopped.

Then it began again, deeper and calming.

“Ah. Well, perhaps your germs are not the most threat.” He cleared his throat slightly, but his voice was still choked. “I guess this explains why you’re never ill, Enjolras.” And then trying again, a shake in breath and words. “I hate to tell you this, my friend, but you appear to be mechanical.”

“I am aware of this.” Enjolras said, getting progressively harder to understand.

A hand touched his hair, brushing it away from his face, to the other side of his damaged jaw. “I am, as you are well aware, very out of my depth here.” His hands went to the hole in Enjolras’ chest, and Enjolras stopped being able to feel them at all as they went beyond his sensors.

“Don’t-“ He started, before a jolt shocked both Joly and him, sending a spasm through his limbs and making the young doctor jerk away.

Combeferre stifled a worried noise, and there was a low murmur of clothing and movement as he went to Joly. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” He replied, a little breathless.

It was at that moment that a crowd of steps struggled to get through the door at once. Combeferre moved to intercept, with calm words. “As glad as I am that you are worried about Enjolras’ safety, none of you are going to help him.”

“Is that a wire sticking out of his chest?” Came in return, a voice that probably belonged to Bahorel. The bluntness certainly did.

“Ah.” Came the eloquent parry. “Yes, it is.”

A smaller set of footsteps, scampering rather than treading, came from the opposite side of the café. Joly’s startled curse –‘Sweet mother!’- announced the arrival of Gavroche.

In a voice that was more thought than air, the urchin laughed to himself, and spoke. “So R was right, eh?”

Joly shooed him away, to join the rest congregating in the entrance and asking questions increasingly difficult for Combeferre to field.

Instead, the child jumped up onto the table where Enjolras lay. “Hey, Mister, are you really a robot?” He spoke for only the two of them, and the rest were too loud themselves for any but Enjolras, Joly, and himself to hear.

“He is mechanical.” Joly replied, when sounds came from Enjolras’ mouth, but were no longer defined.

“So you’re a metal man, not a marble man.” The gamin continued.

“That would be correct, Gavroche-“ Joly said, as he shooed the boy away more physically. “Keep it to yourself for now, alright?”

“Does R know?”

“Yes, he helped Combeferre carry him in.”

“So I can talk to him.”

Joly sighed, and Enjolras could almost see him touching his nose in his customary gesture. “If you can find him.”

With a hurried ‘thanks’ Gavroche returned to wherever it was he’d come from. The boy was good friends with Grantaire, who he’d tried unsuccessfully to pickpocket after they’d both been at the same meeting for the first time.

Well, ‘unsuccessful’ was debateable. Bahorel often laughed about it when it was brought up –one of the more infamous friendships, Gavroche was often to blame for bottles in Grantaire’s hand that were out of his pocket-range. Similarly, Grantaire was partly to blame for Gavroche’s knowledge of parts of the city, and some of his political nouse. 

For some reason, the fighter thought that the altercation had been hilarious. Grantaire had been about to pay for some of his tab when Gavroche had swiped everything from his pocket, and Grantaire’s hand had snapped out and grabbed his wrist. Gavroche had responded by biting his arm until he found himself suspended by the ankles by a man that appeared to be barely standing.

And then wasn’t standing, and they’d both ended up on the floor, but Gavroche had given the money back out of appreciation of talent, and Grantaire had showed him some flashy trick to keep a mark occupied that Gavroche hadn’t known –and that was rare- and they were friends.

“Enjolras?” Joly asked. “Are you awake?”

A slur of sound in a vaguely positive tone answered.

“I’m going to get Combeferre, alright? He knows more about, er, this sort of thing.”

He tried to ask how the march was going, how their protest was holding up, since it seemed like almost the entire Les Amis was standing in the doorway still. Joly had no chance of understanding what he said, but Combeferre had either picked up the ability to read his impulses or just knew him well enough to predict him, as he answered.

“They’ve moved on without us. It’s going exactly as planned –one of the other leaders has stepped up, I gave hir the notes from your practice that I made. They speak well.”

He must have been walking closer while Enjolras tried to speak, hadn’t been hearing anything over his own voice.

“Now, Enjolras, is there a way for me to find out some basic information?” He cleared his throat, and he’d be fiddling with his glasses. “About you, I mean.”

Shaking his head once turned out to be far more understandable than his attempts to speak.

“Well, that’s alright.” He comforted, his bedside manner as calm as his planning. “I can see what I can do.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavroche is the best (or worst) friend to have.

Grantaire was, in his own way, very difficult to find. For Gavroche, not so much. R had shown him all the city he hadn’t seen, and Gavroche had done the same.

So it barely took an hour to find him, sitting in a park. He was drawing fervently, and in the glimpse of the page Gavroche got before he was noticed and the book slammed shut, he saw long hair and wires, hands and skeletal machinery.

“Hey, Gav.” Grantaire greeted.

“So your marble man’s a metal man.”

“I guess.”

“Explains a lot.”

“It does.”

“D’you think he’s killed people? Or has laser eyes-“

“You’re not really helping here, Gav.”

“What, ‘cause you like a guy that’s actually a tin can?”

The pencil in Grantaire’s hand snapped. “He’s not a tin can.”

“No, he ain’t, he’s got wires and electric stuff.”

Grantaire nodded to himself, along with some internal thought process. Then, he spoke. “What’s happening?”

Gavroche gave him a look that said he was an idiot, but he told him anyway. “’Ferre was sticking his hand in Enj’s guts when I left. Joly doesn’t know what he’s doin’. Everyone’s sitting around outside.”

“Do any of them know?”

“Other than ‘Ferre and Joly? Don’t think so.” He said, then tipped his head in consideration. “Well, Enj does.”

“Hah hah.” Grantaire stated.

They sat in silence for a few moments, with not a little fidgeting.

~

Meanwhile, Combeferre had connected a wire that made a bright pulse emit from Enjolras’ chest, giving him quite a fright. It didn’t seem to harm Enjolras, though, as he said nothing, despite that his jaw was what was fixed first.

~

When Gavroche finally acted Grantaire’s age, he dragged the slightly-protesting artist back to the café with him. He wasn’t protesting hard enough to stop himself being led back, though.   
The others were, as Gavroche had said, all sitting around the front step of the café.   
“R!” Jehan cried out as he saw him, “has Gavroche told you?”   
“That Enjolras was shot? I carried him in with Combeferre.”  
“Yes!” A few pairs of eyes, included Jehan’s own, flickered over him. “You don’t seem so upset.”  
“He’ll be fine.”  
“What do you know that we don’t?” Came a voice from the back –Eponine’s, it sounded like. 

Combeferre’s voice came from inside. “Guys, you can come in now.” But he had come to stand just inside the door. As he was one of the taller Amis, few of them could see over him. “But you need to be aware, he’s not quite…”  
“He’s a robot.” Gavroche shouted, from the back of the group.   
Bahorel and Feuilly sent a look at Grantaire, which he pretended not to see.   
“Ah. Yes, he is.”  
There was an explosion of babble, and Combeferre stepped aside. He’d helped Enjolras to sit up, given him his jacket and done it up to hide the should-be-fatal wound. While he doubted any Amis would ditch Enjolras over this, he didn’t want to risk it in a surprise that big.   
He knew what they’d see when they tumbled into the room.


End file.
